Let's all arrest one another

How not to run a police force

IT SEEMS, for the moment, as if South Africa's governing class is being engulfed by charges of corruption. Three weeks ago it was the turn of Jacob Zuma, the newly elected leader of the ruling African National Congress (ANC). He was charged with fraud, tax evasion and money laundering and is due in court in August. This week it was the turn of Jackie Selebi, the head of the police. The National Prosecuting Authority says it will charge him with corruption and “defeating the ends of justice”. He has been suspended from his job and he also resigned as head of Interpol, the international police body. On January 8th the police also arrested Gerrie Nel, a senior member of a special investigations unit known as the Scorpions, also on charges of corruption. He is the man who had led the investigation into Mr Selebi. All the charges against Mr Nel, however, were dropped a week later.

All these cases point to an unduly incestuous relationship between the politicians and the country's supposedly independent security apparatus. They also illustrate the way in which the acrimonious battle for power between Mr Zuma and Thabo Mbeki, the country's president whom he defeated in December's ANC leadership election, is poisoning both the civil service and the political system.

Mr Selebi is Mr Mbeki's man, and the president has discredited himself by defending his friend too doggedly. Months ago Mr Selebi admitted to being a friend of Glen Agliotti, a drug trafficker who was implicated in the murder in 2005 of a shady mining magnate. When faced with angry public calls to replace Mr Selebi, Mr Mbeki merely asked South Africans to trust him. The prosecuting authority's new allegations are particularly damaging. It says that as well as handing out bags of cash to Mr Selebi, Mr Agliotti also paid for some of the police chief's shopping. In return, Mr Selebi protected Mr Agliotti's friends and shared confidential documents with him. The police chief denies all the charges.

The prosecuting authority, already accused of abusing its power to settle scores against Mr Zuma, has itself been caught in the crossfire, as have the Scorpions, who report to it. In September Vusi Pikoli, the national prosecutor, was suspended as he was poised to arrest Mr Selebi. Mr Mbeki said this was due to a breakdown in Mr Pikoli's relations with his boss, the justice minister. But the timing of Mr Pikoli's fall fed suspicions that he was in fact being punished for going after Mr Selebi.

Mr Nel's arrest was seen by some as retaliation by Mr Selebi's force against the Scorpions, since they had helped bring the charges against Mr Selebi. That the charges against Mr Nel were dropped so fast suggests that they were pretty spurious in the first place. The episode will only deepen the bitter rivalry between the Scorpions and the regular police.

This murky sort of business would scandalise any country. But in one plagued by some of the highest levels of violent crime in the world, it is tragic that South Africa's law-enforcement officials should expend so much energy fighting each other rather than the criminals. The police judged that they needed no fewer than 20 armed officers to arrest Mr Nel at his home. On the hopeful side, the charges against Mr Selebi show that no one yet is above the law. But if they turn out to be true, it will further reduce confidence in a police force that is often perceived, at best, as merely incompetent.